


Breakdown

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 22:26:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl and family, before and after the shit hits the fan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakdown

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally started for a prompt at . Then the prompt got changed, but I liked this so I kept writing. One line blatantly stolen from _Live Free or Die Hard_ (thank you John McClane.) Pre-series. Titles are hard, yo.
> 
> * * *

Daryl goes to the hospital once a week.

He doesn’t know that the nurses joke that they could set their watches by him, from the time he steps into the old man’s room precisely at one p.m. every Sunday and lets the door swing shut quietly behind him as he leaves at exactly one thirty. He doesn’t know that some of them make snide comments about the noise his boots make as he strides down the long white hallway, or the dirt or engine grease that’s sometimes under his nails. He has no idea that one of the ward nurses put in a complaint about him that was quickly quashed by the head nurse, or that another has tentatively approached him three times with the intention of asking him out only to lose her nerve at the last minute. 

When he arrives he’s focused only on his father. And when he leaves? He’s just thinking about finding the nearest bottle of Southern Comfort and getting shit-faced.

He always stops and takes a breath before he flattens his hand on the wood and pushes his way inside. He never knows what version of the old man is going to be waiting for him behind the door.

* ~ * ~ *

“Who are you?”

The old man squints at him in the early afternoon light streaming in the window. The whole room stinks of old piss, and when Daryl leaves at the end of his visit he’s going to have to find someone in charge and raise hell again. Now he just steps to the end of the bed, bites at the inside of his lip.

“It’s me, Dad,” he says. “It’s Daryl.”

“I don’t know you,” the old man says, voice quavering. He fumbles for the bell that will call the nurse, and Daryl steps quickly to the side of the bed, reaches down to rest his hand over his father’s to still the movement. The last thing he needs is for the stone bitch that’s on today to come running in, start in on him again about upsetting his father, petting the old man’s lank hair and soothing him like a dog. He sees the fear in his dad’s eyes and blinks his own rapidly, tries to quiet his movements. 

“Dad, it’s okay,” he says softly. “I’m your son. Daryl.”

His father slinks back on the bed, pulls the covers to his chest and shakes his head. “I don’t know you,” he repeats.

* * *

“I told your mama,” the old man mutters.

Daryl looks up from where he is slumped in the room’s only chair, meets the blue eyes blazing at him from the bed. “Told her what?”

“’Just one more,’ she said,” his dad continues. His eyes wander to the wall, but Daryl can tell he’s not seeing anything but the past. “’Merle’s gettin’ so damn big, just want a little one to hold’, she said. I told her, I said it was a bad idea, but she went and got herself knocked up anyway. Shit, was I mad? Pushed her down the damn stairs tryin’ to get rid of it ‘fore it took, that’s what I did.”

Daryl curls his fingers around the arms of the chair. “Don’t say that shit.”

The old man laughs. “Why not? It’s the damn truth, ain’t it? Never wanted you. Never loved you, neither.” He sits up straighter, meets Daryl’s eyes again and squares his shoulders. “My life woulda been a fuckload better if you’d’a never been born.”

* * *

“You’re a good boy, son. Come sit by me.” 

Daryl glances over his shoulder in time to see the old man raise one hand, gesture feebly. 

He’s been looking out the window, watching the flow of traffic. There’s been some crazy shit on the news lately, the talking heads going on and on about people going bugshit in the city, lurching around like they’re drunk off their asses and biting other people, and even here in their little ‘burg everybody’s on alert, checkpoint set up at the entrance to the hospital. He squints at a lone pedestrian at the side of the road, dude in grey, swaying like he’s gotten into Merle’s stash. And something on his face, something dark that’s spilled down from his chin and stained his shirt.

“Come sit with me,” the old man says again.

Daryl shakes his head and puts the stranger out of his mind. He pushes off from the windowsill, walks silently to the side of the bed to where his father is patting his hand. He sits, and when the hand comes up to stroke at his arm he tries not to flinch, he does, but the memories are never far from the surface when he’s in this room.

His dad’s nails are too long, and they scrape listlessly at his skin as the hand moves up and down, up and down. 

“You’re a good boy, son,” the old man repeats. “Such a good boy, Merle.”

* ~ * ~ *

They peel down the dirt road, leaving a cloud of dust hanging in the still August air in their wake. Through it, Daryl can just make out the body of the thing that attacked them struggling to rise to its feet. The thing – and he can’t think of it as Mr. Jenkins no more, Jenkins that used to give him cookies when he was a kid, Jenkins that caught him making out with Rosalie in the corn field when they wasn’t no more than fourteen and nearly disemboweled him with a damn pitch fork. No, it ain’t Mr. Jenkins now, it’s just a thing, a rotten festering dead thing, and it came on them so fast as they were tossing the last of the supplies in the back of the truck that he didn’t have time for a head shot, just swung up his deer rifle and fired into the chest, the range close enough that the impact flung the thing back into the dirt. Gave them enough time to pile into the front seat and make their escape, anyway.

“Shiiiiiiiiiiit!” Merle screeches, grinning and pounding the wheel with the flat of his palm. “You see that? Hells yes, boy!”

“’Course I saw it. I did it,” Daryl bites out. He doesn’t take his eyes off the side mirror until they’ve left their little strip of property and have turned onto the two lane blacktop that takes them into town. It’s only then that he really takes in their surroundings, frowns over at his brother. “You’re going the wrong way.”

“No I ain’t.”

“Merle, we gotta get the old man.” When Merle simply leans out the window and spits, Daryl lunges for the wheel. “You’re goin’ the wrong damn way!”

The truck swerves over the center line, straight into the path of a late-model sedan, and Daryl has a confused impression of wide frantic eyes behind the wheel, luggage piled haphazardly on the battered roof, the squeal of tires before the sedan veers toward the tree-line and narrowly misses them. Then Merle’s elbow is connecting with his chest and he has to slam the palm of his hand on the dash to avoid going through the windshield as Merle skids the truck to a stop.

For a moment he thinks Merle’s going to lay into him, and his body tenses, fingers curling in anticipation to give back as good as he gets. But after a glare that could strip paint from the walls Merle just settles back onto the seat, rasps a hand over the stubble of his beard and eyes him.

The only sound is the ticking of the engine, the cicadas in the long grass at the side of the road.

“You wanna pick him up,” Merle finally says.

It’s not a question, but Daryl bristles anyway. “Fuck yeah.”

“Let me get this straight,” Merle says. “Let me make sure I’m _understandin’_ you, little brother. You wanna drive into the middle of the goddamn _hot zone_ , and you want us to pick up the old man and take him—“

“Jesus Christ, Merle,” Daryl snaps. “He’s our father.”

Merle turns to stare out the windshield. Daryl watches his eyes lock on and track another passing car, this one with a harried looking woman behind the wheel, couple of kids shoved in the backseat. When he turns back to Daryl, he’s grinning.

“Well all right then,” Merle says. 

Daryl shifts on the seat. It’s the same grin Daryl remembers seeing on Merle’s face as a kid, right before he tied the cans on the tail of the old mutt that wandered the property looking for scraps of food. The same one he remembers Merle wearing before he bopped the cop in the nose who stopped him for speeding, the same one he wore before countless bar fights and backroom brawls. 

“If that’s what you wanna do, let’s go get him then,” Merle continues in that same laid-back drawl. “Sure, we can just load him in the back with the bike there, make him real comfy. And when he starts screamin’ about wanting his medicine or yellin’ for mama ‘cause he forgot she’s been dead for twenty-five goddamn years, you can just duct-tape his mouth shut so he don’t draw the walkers right to our camp, is that it?”

“Merle.”

“Hey, maybe the smell of his shitty diapers will drive them walkers away, huh? ‘Bout the only thing that stinks more than they do.” 

Daryl slumps in the passenger seat. “You’re a real shithead.”

Merle just bares his teeth in another ferocious grin. “Well? Are we goin’ for the old man or not?”

Daryl knows the plan, much as they’d been able to hash one out between slinging food and ammo into the truck and keeping an eye on the emergency broadcast that wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. Head to the woods, that’s the basic plan. Maybe find an old hunting cabin that ain’t falling to shit, maybe head out to that old rock quarry outside Atlanta where the old man used to take them fishing before he buried himself in the bottle. Lay low, keep quiet and live off the land. See if this thing blows over. That was the plan.

He tries to insert their father into this scenario, tries to factor in their chances of survival with their dad in the mix. The old man who still sometimes sees bugs climbing out of the walls, whose brain’s so addled that he holds long, loud, rambling conversations with people that’ve been dead and buried almost as long as Daryl been alive. Whose body is wasted, arms that used to ripple with muscle when the belt came down withered away to brittle sticks. He tries to picture him and Merle caring for the old man, keeping him safe, keeping themselves safe. He tries and fails.

“Well?” Merle barks. 

Daryl looks out the passenger window, swipes a hand over his eyes. “Just fuckin’ drive.”

Merle starts up the truck, eases back into the right lane. “That’s right,” he says as the truck picks up speed, the trees whirling by blurry and indistinct to Daryl’s eyes. “You stick with ol’ Merle. _I’m_ your family. And you and me, together? We’re gonna be just fine.”


End file.
